Box-Garden

The ears of the man to my left at the bar were blocking off my view of the TV set. This annoyed me. The commercial was on, and I didn't want to miss any of it. Leaning forward, trying to get the man's head and ears out of my line of sight, I bumped against his shoulder. He turned, taking my accidental nudge to be an invitation to converse.

"I'm getting pretty tired," the big-eared man said to me, "of being treated like an adult pituitary-deficiency case." He nodded his head and ears at the screen. "Look at that thing that's on now," he said. "It's an insult and an outrage."

I watched the TV commercial closely, trying to discover what had triggered this outburst from my neighbor. An elf in a scarlet hat was pouring emerald golf balls onto a plate, to the tune of Bryant & May's "Garden-Fresh" song. That commercial, I thought myself, was as much a triumph of Yankee ingenuity as was color television itself. No child, no housewife in America, could fail to identify that elf and his song with Bryant & May's Garden-Fresh Peas.

My big-eared friend was still glaring at the screen as though that commercial had been designed to insult him. "You don't like commercials?" I demanded. I wasn't really the least bit angry. You meet all kinds in the advertising business.

"Advertising may be necessary," he hedged, pulling at the lobe of one of those magnificent ears of his. "Still, it doesn't take a choir of TV elves or a cantata sung by squeaky-voiced animals to remind me to launder my sox, or to point out that a beer would go good when I'm thirsty. Hell, I outgrew the advice of teddy-bears years ago." He sipped his beer, staring at my reflection in the bar mirror as though trying to decide whether I was worthy of his further confidence. He must have decided I had a sincere face, because he scooted up closer. "What's more," he said, "some of these commercials, like the one we just saw, frighten me terribly." Big-ears whispered this last like a murderer in Shakespeare.

I laughed in spite of myself. "The Bryant & May elf? Afraid of him? Man, that's like being scared of Santa Claus."

"It's not that simple," he rapped back. "It's not only fear those commercials inspire, but pity." I stared at him now, thinking maybe he was a recruiter for a nudist colony or a ward-worker for the Vegetarian Party, or some other sort of fanatic peddling his exotic ritual. "Let me explain," he asked quickly, seeing my hesitation. "Want another beer?" I reflexively named the beer my agency handles, smooooth Billygoat Beer.

When the bartender had set our refills before us and moved out of earshot, my big-eared confidant explained. "Do you know what bansai means?" he asked.

"Sure," I said. "That's when the little men come screaming out of the palm-trees, waving their swords."

He smiled briefly. "You've got the right string, friend, but the wrong yo-yo. It's Japanese, all right; but spelled with an "s," not a "z." A bansai is a dwarf tree raised for a Japanese box-garden, or hakoniwa . They've been growing bansais on those islands for fifteen hundred years: full-grown pines you can put in a flowerpot, oaks two hundred years old and a foot tall, all with perfect tiny limbs and leaves."

"A trick?" I asked.

"Not exactly," Big-ears said. "Here's how they do it in Japan. You take an ordinary acorn from an oak four stories tall. Plant it. Give the little tree time to get its shell cracked and its leaves unfolded in the sunlight. From that minute on, treat it like a wicked stepmother. Keep it in a plate too shallow for its roots. When the taproot starts twisting around, all frustrated, lop it off. Bend the trunk out of shape with wires, so's it'll look as though it has been bent to the storms off the North Pacific since granddad was a suckling. Takes a long time, like the man said in the poem."

I made the V-sign for another pair of Billygoat Beers. "Interesting and all," I admitted. "But what does this exposé of Jap silviculture have to do with American television?"

"That's where my story gets ugly," said my friend with the ears. His voice dropped low again, confidential. "The Japanese didn't have hormones for their bansais . They made their midget oaks and pines and ginko-trees without the help of negative catalysts or anti-vitamins. They didn't even know B-12 from the far side of Fujiyama, when they started their box-gardens.

"The people running TV know those things. You never see an announcer on a toothpaste show who doesn't talk like a biochemistry Ph.D. explaining paper chromatography in a kindergarten. You know what I mean. The guys who point their index fingers at you from the screen, all tricked out in doctor-coats with stethoscopes on their necks and reflectors on their foreheads to prove that Science stands behind every tube of their particular gunk. They talk a line that would take the Nobel Prize in Medicine if it meant anything, then rub it in with shots of dancing bears and gnomes and chorus girls six inches tall."

Big-ears shuddered. "The people who put the calories in our breakfast woodchips know all about biology, now," he said, getting louder. "They've got laboratories, and even brag about having them. What's more," he said, his voice shrill now, "they use those laboratories of theirs to do their commercials."

"Still can't see where you've got anything to be afraid of," I said, tamping a cigarette tight on the bar.

Big-ears glanced up at the screen and shushed me. "Just watch this," he said, pointing. I watched. A tiny clown carried an opener at right-shoulder-arms toward a palisade of beer cans. He did port-arms with his opener, shoved one of the cans to the center of the screen, and punched two holes in the top of the can. He grounded the opener, still according to the Manual of Arms, bear-hugged the beer can to tip it into a glass, then picked up the glass, which was tall as he was, and chuga-lugged the lot.

While I don't like to commend the competition, that was a good, workmanlike script. I'd be proud to have done that myself. We turned from the screen as the show came on. "Did you see that?" Big-ears demanded.

I paused before I answered, straining to be real objective. "Some people might think it was a bit childish," I said.

"It's obscene!" he hissed. "Can't you see how the advertisers get that horrible realism? Haven't you watched those tiny ballerinas with king-sized cigarettes for partners? Didn't I tell you about the bansai -trees and how they grow?"

People down the bar were staring at Big-ears now, impatient of his shouts, his noise that didn't fit the show on the screen. The bartender, glaring at my neighbor, twisted the TV's sound-knob so that the laughter from the set became a niagara. Big-ears raised his voice above his electronic competition. "Do you suppose those little bears, and monkeys, and clowns and chorus girls are puppets, maybe? Was that a doll that opened the beer, a toy that poured the peas for Bryant & May? No! They're changing real people, that's what they're doing."

The bartender walked like a tank around the bar and came down our side toward Big-ears. He folded the man's lapels in one hand and explained softly, "These people want to hear our show. You'll have to go on down the street if you want any more beer tonight, friend."

Big-ears didn't argue, but he called over his shoulder as the bartender escorted him to the door. "Remember what I told you, please remember!" I turned away, embarrassed. The poor little fellow had got so deep in his story that he was actually crying as he left the bar.

I had another of those smooooth Billygoat Beers before I left, feeling pretty sorry for my little friend with the big ears.

This was about a year ago—Washington's Birthday, I think.

Last night, watching TV at home, I saw a sad-eyed dwarf in an orange cape and green shoes show how Pullo penetrates those sluggish kitchen drains. He did a poor job. Those big, familiar ears just weren't made for drainpipe work.